Cognitive is India's Future: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty

BENGALURU: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty made a strong pitch for the company's cognitive business in India.

“You are a country of developers, which is why I say cognitive is India's future,“ she said, pointing out that by 2020, the country will be home to the largest developer population in the world, with three million programmers helping develop at least 10 per cent of the apps this year.

Ever since Rometty took over as CEO in January 2012, she has reshaped the company around newer areas like cloud and cognitive.

“We believe the future of technology and business is going to be around cognitive and we have built out ourselves as a cloud platform company.We now have 50 cloud centers around the world and here as well,“ said Rometty, adding that over 40% of IBM is around cloud, big data, security, mobility and its cognitive computing platform Watson.

She also singled out healthcare as an area where cognitive could make a big difference.

“To me, it (healthcare) is one of the top three issues of the world,“ said Rometty. “We've built businesses around oncology , government health systems, imaging, genomics.“ In India, the company has already announced a tieup with Manipal Hospital to use cognitive computing for cancer care.

Rometty straight-batted criticism of her continuing presence in President Donald Trump's White House Business advisory council.

“I am on an advisory council, with a number of companies around the world to give input,“ said Rometty , when asked about Trump's thinking on immigration and visas.

“The topic of jobs is the topic of every country I go to. And no matter which prime minister I meet with, they want to know how many jobs you have in the country. Jobs are important to every country,“ said Rometty.

Rometty and Tesla boss Elon Musk have been subject to criticism on their decision to continue working with the Trump administration since Uber CEO Travis Kalanick stepped down from the council earlier this month.“The way to get progress is to engage...to bring solutions. In cases where there are dilemmas between freedom of movement and people and security, there are always tradeoffs,“ said Rometty. “There are answers to this. All this talk about cognitive, there are ways to make the world more secure, so people can move freely,“ she said.

Separately, RCom initiated contempt proceedings in the apex court against the Department of Telecommunications, blaming it for delaying a spectrum sale that would have enabled dues to be paid to Ericsson and lenders.